2/ There are many bad dev practices in computational social science. When I started I rarely saw shared model code, let alone unit-tests! It's gotten better. But, it's still bad. I think part of the problem is a focus on latex-friendly artifacts to satisfy institutional concerns.
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3/ The result is papers / books that have elegantly written and illustrated VV&T sections... ...on incorrect models. Since I started, I've decompiled two Java political models published in monographs because the code wasn't shared. The models were wrong -- grossly so.
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4/ Code communicates a model. Well-written code clearly communicates a model. You can't understand a model without reading the code. Everything else communicates intention.
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5/ Intention is a good thing to convey. But more often than not, these things just facilitate quick skimming -- another institutional demand. The result is a perception of understanding without understanding over an ever-growing set of invalid models that have pretty façades.
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6/ Again, it can be a useful adjuvant. But when you delude yourself into thinking diagrams are capable of fully-communicating a model -- and invest your time in them accordingly -- your model usually that suffers. (And, your docs and code probably end up temporally mismatched.)
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Certainly appreciate people's rejection/resistance to uml; especially bc it can be a time-sink. I often find it useful to read, tho. ...and if it doesn't match the code then there's an immediate validation concern, right?
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Eh. Sometimes. But, more often than not I think it's symptomatic of UML not easily representing what code represents easily.
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When you can snatch the pebble from my hand but don’t out of convention...it’s time for you to graduate grasshopper.
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Hah. I am *very* ready to do so...
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